AWBF General Manager’s Log – September 2015

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If we are all a little square-eyed and blunt-fingered around here, it’s because there’s been an awful lot of keyboard time logged at the AWBF just recently.  We’ve completed a densely-packed 30-page submission for the Tasmanian Tourism Awards, while at the same time launching our new and shiny AWBF News Blog. Many thanks to all of the contributors who helped with these two jobs and special thanks to the boys in the back room who have put in hundreds of hours to make these two big projects work:  Tim Oxley on design and content, Rob Oates on layout and photography, Duncan Bridges on coding and technical support.  The outcome was worth the wait:  we have a lively new channel of communication with our members and subscribers, one that will get the news to you in a faster and more efficient way.  September 2015 sees the first of these electronic newsletters go out.  It contains a digest of the latest articles to be published on our News Blog site, which you can visit any time at awbf.com.au

Here’s how it works:  we will add new features, stories and articles to the AWBF News Blog all through the month, as they come in.  That means your story about a new project, an upcoming event or a piece of maritime history will be published faster.  Send us your news and your pictures and if they are of interest to the AWBF community, they’ll be up there in a flash.  If you have more pressing things to do than check a website every day, we’ve got you covered:  once a month, we’ll send you a digest of all the latest news in the form of an electronic post, the AWBF Newsletter.  To get that, of course, we need to know where to send it.  We are taking the opportunity to refresh and confirm our whole email subscriber list, so please:  log on to the subscription site and: SUBSCRIBE  People move, email addresses change and we don’t always hear about it, so if you want to stay in touch, please renew your details today.  If a friend or colleague in the wooden boat community hasn’t heard about this change, please give them the tip:  Subscribe!

It’s been an exciting month for other reasons, too.  Our world-hopping media manager Daryl Peebles has been in the Netherlands, attending Sail Amsterdam, the largest maritime event in the world.  With 600 tall ships and 1.6 million people coming to see them, it’s one of Europe’s biggest festivals.  Just as well that it happens only once every five years, or we’d be getting jealous!  Daryl is there on a mission – to drum up a significant presence from the Netherlands at the 2017 Australian Wooden Boat Festival.  It’s the 375th anniversary of the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman’s brief visit back in 1642, the first European to record sighting what he would call Van Diemen’s Land, later known as Tasmania.  Daryl will be back soon with a full report and we’ll get that to you, too.

By the way, things are afoot on the Hobart waterfront, with an upcoming renovation of Franklin Wharf and good progress on the new Macquarie Wharf No.1 building.  We’re very interested in anything that affects the layout of our precious festival site, so AWBF is right in the thick of it, following (and sometimes nudging just a little) plans for changes that will be in place by February 2017.  We’ll update you on that next month.

Paul Cullen, General Manager

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